Monday, August 7, 2017

Toons You Might've Missed: Roland & Rattfink (1968)

DePatie-Freleng tried to expand their line of comedy shorts beyond The Pink Panther, Ant & The Aardvark, & The Inspector, at the end of the 60's. However, Roland & Rattfink, a human-centric riff on the adversarial conflicts of, say, Tom & Jerry or even the Panther himself and the Little Man, didn't really catch on, with 17 shorts produced between December 1968 and April 1971.

For all but one of these shorts, the vocal effects were performed by Len Weinrib. In "Hawks & Doves", Len is joined by June Foray:



Roland & Rattfink, according to at least Wikipedia, had appeared on one of the Panther's NBC shows, but I cannot confirm that, as I don't recall seeing these two on TV. This was DFE's way of reaching out to the huppie culture of the period, which unfortunately, based on the low output, tuned them out.

Rating: B-.

2 comments:

Silverstar said...

IIRC, some of the Roland & Rattfink shorts aired on TNT years ago, back when the network aired cartoon blocks such as Wild World of Shorts. In fact, that was my first exposure to these characters. R&R were basically personifications of good and evil, respectively, in a variety of occupations and guises.

hobbyfan said...

Hmm, another way would be that they were DFE's answer to Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy strip, which is still running today.